Authors are always enmeshed in a culture, it cannot be otherwise, and I think we have observed that the idea of an author penning an inspired text does not mute, overcome, or diminish there cultural-ness. Abraham and child sacrifice, Moses and ordered genocide, Paul and slavery…
Jean Gebser, writing early in the 20th century, noted that civilizations go through stages of development that represent actual ways of seeing and viewing the world. His observation was that humanity’s stage of consciousness and development was reflected in their meaning making as a culture. A magic/tribal culture will make sense of their world, with sun and rain god’s and the corresponding dances to invoke those god’s activity differently than a postmodern pluralistic culture makes sense of it’s multicultural, rationalistic way of explaining a drought. Gebser’s contribution is in noting that over the course of thousands of years cultures have undergone slow but marked evolutionary development.
This is particularly helpful as we realize the issues we have been discussing here. If Abraham, in his particular societal stage of development and therefore a corresponding personal view of the world, the gods, and what it means to communicate with the gods, involves child sacrifice, then there is nothing particularly difficult or abhorrent about the Abraham narrative of Genesis 22.
Gebser’s lens of societal evolutionary development is exactly what we need to help us understand and then explain how the God of the Old Testament seems like a different God in the New Testament. The genocidal god of the OT, railed against by the proponents of the New Atheism like Sam Harris, Dawkins, Dennet and Hitchens, continues to be defended as the same God we serve and worship in the Jesus of the NT. I have watched smart and notable Oxford scholars in debate with these guys ridiculously defend why that OT god is the same as the NT god; never once noting this isn’t about God this is about various cultures views and perspectives about God. Our stupid defenses are complicating our problems in public discourse not solving them.
One of the missing pieces to this complicated, and seemingly unnecessarily complicated at times, conversation is that these views of God in the biblical text are views within a particular social evolutionary window complete with views of god(s), science, the cosmos etc… I don’t need to defend why God ordered genocide in Numbers 31, which I have watched happen on nationally televised debates in England. I need to say this was the view of God, society and war that was prevalent in the worldview of 2000-1500 bce. Just because we believe the text was inspired does not mean the people written about in the text therefore escape their cultural/societal and worldview specificity.
We will explore Gebser more this next week.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
So it seems clear that our error is in not looking at ourselves….
Meaning that our struggles with the scriptures and how it is useful and authoritatinin our world today is because we have a very flat and unhelpful understanding of ourselves as human beings. We have been, in the church, so myopically focused on the scriptures, that we have totally missed ourselves and how we are involved in the process of living the spirit of the text. We have missed ourselves on both sides, you pointed out that we have missed the human vertical development aspect of the writers of the scriptures but we also often miss the developmental issues involved whenwe read the scriptures as well.
It’s like a struggling couple failing to realize that it takes “tep to tango” and the struggles that they face have two sides to them. We have been the one partner in the couple(the church) who has kept blaming the other partner(the scriptures) for the struggles…. (ie. How could Paul contradict himself so much in his writings? “In Christ ther is no Greek nor Jew, no male nor female, no slave or free” then go on to write restrictions on women (silence in church and head coverings) support slavery (slaves obey your master’s as unto the Lord) and the hot button one : condemn homosexuality which has no meaning if there is truly, “no male nor female” in Christ.
Is it possible that Paul had flashes of what Gebser describes as integral when he wrote the unitive passage above “There is no more Greek nor Jew, male nor female, slave nor free” (1 Cor 12:13, Gal 3:28, Col 3:11) but then, as an imperfect human being touched by what the Bible calls “sin”, the same Paul falls back into his cultural framework or stages and makes statements that are contradiction to the kind of freedom and unity of his more unitive and integral moments of consciousness. (and Paul himself teaches that even, in Christ, we suffer all the limitations of sin – Romans 8:9)
What I am wrestling with is : how did Paul arrive at those unitive and integral moments (more than once) that seemed to transcend his cultural location but then slip back into cultural limitations on woman, slaves and homosexuals? He seemed to rise above his culture for moments. Did he stay there in a highly advanced state of consciousness but had a tremendous amount of wisdom to know what aspects of his culture he needed to not push too hard on at certain points and in certain geographic locations, so he wouldn’t be killed sooner for being a cultural rebel in every way, like Jesus?
That’s only one side of the equation though because we also have to consider the cultural location of those who are reading, interpreting and applying the scriptures as well…. Since we still have people at every level of development, a mythic reader is going to understand and apply the scriptures VERY differently than someone who’s cultural location is pluralistic. (maybe because of their geographic location, i.e.. They live in New York rather than the hills of west Tennessee or the small villages of north Africa)
These are interesting and inspiring things to consider and i believe you are on to the bigger picture here Ron when it comes to the future of how the church broker’s transformation. Rather than converting people to a religion called Christianity that Jesus never started, our job as followers of Jesus is to help people move through these stages as smoothly as possible and with the most clarity, care and love that we can offer them as their old worldview falls apart and their brain begins the process that Piaget describes of “organizing itself at a higher level of functioning”. I think you are onto the meat of transformation and look forward to hearing other’s ideas in the ttTribe.
Christian, I wonder about some of these same questions. How can Paul seem so on it and unitive Galatians 3 IS a great example and then spin around and make the comments he does about woman being silent and then grounding the whole argument in the priority of creation. I think your comments here have huge value on a couple fronts.
First, that we could even ask these questions about Paul is an acknowledgment that inspiration doesn’t make his views infallible. That is to confuse two very different issues. And I see those issues confused by scholars who write on inspiration an awful lot. Colleagues of mine and former professors who make the word in II Timothy 3.16 “inspiration” bear all sorts of weight it can’t possibly handle. We are importing into a first century word container (and theopnuestos is a hapax in the NT, meaning it is the ONLY place the word is used) an tremendous amount of rationalist systematic theology that couldn’t possibly been in the construct of that first century mind. Those in the mythic fundy camp though are going to string us up. They need more than an immutable text, they want a text that doesn’t change with eternal truths encased in that text. In that regard then they are going to have to be content to live in a Newton geocentric world. We have shown in post after post, that view of God and inspiration will lead you to say OK to concubinage, genocide, oppression of women and endorsement of slavery just to get things started.
Second, you are articulating exactly what I think we are supposed to do as followers of Jesus and it IS the motivation for the Transformational Trek Tribe. Our job is NOT to convert people to a religion Jesus never set out to found, but to help people journey through the stages of development that allow them to be more, act more and live more like Jesus. That is where this set of posts is heading and it is certainly our goal in the ttTribe. I feel a call, if I can use that older language, to help people move through the stages of development which actually IS what Jesus was trying to do. Thanks for your words of affirmation and your insights.